Mania Class

The second casual class I worked up the courage to attend this week was Mania, well it was actually Instructors Choice and our instructor on the day, the flexi-bendy, beautiful Bea, gave us the option between Mania or Trix.

I couldn't help myself, two days before the class I asked on our closed Facebook group what it would be. Bea came back with the choice Mania or Trix, before I could reply one of the other ladies jumped in asking for Mania.

I did screw my nose up about it thinking it would be all too hard. While I was in this incredibly attractive facial pose Bea posted wanting to know if we would like Slow Contemporary or Heavy Metal. Through squinty screwed up eyes I read it and was about to post back Slow Contemporary when the words Heavy Metal appeared on my screen... damn it!

There were quite a few in agreeance and as I started the thread I slumped my shoulders down resigned to the fact that I would be doing a Heavy Metal Mania class, yay me.

I did have a little whine to myself that I would prefer slow but I'd shake my thing in Heavy Metal. So I was committed now, no backing out.

Don't get me wrong, I love heavy metal music, love it, I love driving to it most of all and having it blasting out loud. But dancing to it, not so much. So, paying homage to heavy metal I wore all black. I have a black poling miniskirt/shorty shorts combo and a black "No one knows I'm a pole dancer" tank. I had fresh dark purple colour put in my hair yesterday, so I was kinda feeling it. Once I got there the heat had my palms losing grip and me slipping all over the place, so the black gloves came on and I looked the rocker chick part. No tatts was probably all that was missing. Oh, and I continue to dance barefoot, not quite ready for the super-high heels yet. The other ladies wore theirs, 6 inch and 7 inch and spectacularly gorgeous too.

Something I didn't know before, Mania covers a one minute choreographed sexy pole dance, the one I did just happened to be to a heavy metal song. So I was really clueless and had no idea what to expect, finding out I'd be learning a short dance from beginning to end was a nice surprise.

The song was a heavily edited version of Steel Panther - Eyes of a Panther. I love that song!

We had the whole choreo sorted within the first 20 minutes then it was just over, and over, and over, nailing it. And did we ever in the end. However, during the middle a few of us were seeing stars, me - I thought I'd need a bucket, and there was much laying on the ground, catching breath and laughing too.

In the space of two lots of eight counts we do three double spins. I get incredibly nauseous spinning just one double; pirouettes - barf, show rides - barf, chicanes - barf.

I've found drinking a small bottle of ginger beer before class has actually stopped the nausea all together. For Mania it didn't! You know that feeling you have when you're car sick or sea sick, that's me with lots of spins, that was me in Mania.

We were videoed a few times towards the end of the class, haven't seen it up on the closed Facebook group yet, looking forward to that. I know I have a habit of pushing my lips together when I am focusing on choreo so I'm sure I did during the recording, attractive not! lol

So as the class was wrapping up, we were doing our cool downs and stretches, me I'm just laying on the floor silently moaning, Bea says we should do it on performance night. I'm reasonably laid back about performing now so I'm all "Yeah, okay sounds good", it's not until lift my head up and then get up and sway a bit with motion sickness I think "Holy hell, how am I going to pull this off?" The ginger beer isn't potent enough for this choreography so I'm going to have to hunt down ginger tablets, or hell even start eating fresh ginger, whatever it takes. The last thing I want to end a heavy metal pole performance with is a vomit rainbow, that's just nasty.

I'll keep you in the loop on how it goes, the ginger quest. I know I'm not the only one and if I find something that works, trust me I will be blogging about it in every post.

Back to Mania, ummm how can I put this subtly? I loved it, I loved learning a whole short routine, I loved going over and over it, in the end I even felt confident with the choreo... basically me and Mania - I'm hooked!

Yeah baby, I'm hooked!